Nicole’s 18-year-old daughter Triana remembers singing anti-Israel and anti-American songs with her mother in the car.

Triana’s last contact with her mother was just over a month ago, when Nicole reached her daughter from an unfamiliar number.

“She texted me one day, out of nowhere,” Triana recalled in a Facebook post. “She said she couldn’t tell me where she was or who she was with. She also couldn’t talk to me over the phone. We stopped talking after that.”

Mansfield had made a trip to the Middle East, first reaching Tunisia, then heading to Turkey, and finally Syria. The war-torn country would be her last stop.

According to reports from a Syrian TV station, Mansfield was killed in May while attempting to snap photos of military sites near the Syria-Turkey border. The station reported that Mansfield and two others threw grenades at the Syrian military when confronted by troops. But family members say that Nicole wasn’t the violent type.

“She was not throwing no grenades,” said her father. “That wasn’t no Nikki. I just cannot see it. ... She was terrified of guns. ... I’ve never seen her handle a gun in my life.”